Wesley Bros: The Fantastic Quadrilateral Part 4

In case you weren’t paying attention, I’ve been fascinated lately with 1960’s Marvel comics (which I’ve been reading a ton of), and the Bros have been transformed into Jack Kirby-land. As we deconstruct the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, I thought it would be good to explore non-Wesleyan forms of biblical interpretation, namely fundamentalist so-called “literalism” and Protestant Liberalism. For those of you who have been asking, Inscriptural Woman is Beth Moore of the popular women’s video bible studies. Girl has a lot of clout in Methodism though she is technically Southern Baptist. She doesn’t believe women should have authority over men, though she has quite an invisible presence in biblical teaching over a lot more men than she lets on! There are a lot of historical decisions (like ordaining women in the Methodist Church, abolition of slavery, including Gentiles into the Christian church, to name a few) that were considered contrary to plain scriptural teaching. At the time those things were considered sinful or contrary to God’s will by the ‘literal’ translation of scripture, but the Holy Spirit moved people to see God at work in a bigger way as God continues to broaden our concept of his infinite love.

But the solution is not to just throw out “Tradition” (read historical doctrine) and traditional views of scripture (i.e. the charicatured Protestant Liberalism portrayed by FBC, Anytown in the above comic). I won’t give you much more because I don’t want to give away the conclusion to this series!

Rev. Charlie Baber is author and illustrator of the weekly web comic: Wesley Bros. When he isn’t finding new ways to mash-up church history with modern culture, he has actual responsibilities as a Deacon serving at Highland UMC in Raleigh, NC. Check out Charlie’s site at www.wesleybros.com.

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